Harry Harrison - Make Room, Make Room.

[Dave]

Written in 1966, ‘Make Room, Make Room’ won Harry Harrison the Nebula Award, and was made into the Charlton Heston, Edward G Robinson film ‘Soylent Green’ in 1973.

The book is set in 1999 (it becomes 2022 in the film). Automation, total welfare, and weekends on the moon are what most Science fiction novels predicted for the new century. Harry Harrison saw the American Government – with 9% of the world population in 1950, but a 50% consumption of raw materials, and increasing – unwilling to consider the problem of birth control – and instead produced ‘Make Room, Make Room’.

An overcrowded world, on the edge of disaster, starving billions living on lentils, soya beans and – if they’re lucky – the odd starving rat. New York City with a population of thirty-five million people exists in perpetual heat. Andy Rusch is a policeman engaged in a desperate and lonely hunt for a killer everyone has forgotten…even for a world such as this a policeman can find himself utterly alone…

He also hears from his elderly flatmate, Sol, about an earlier time when things were better, and how to mix cocktails.

Although, the film is not as good as the book, it does have a better ending…a climax revealing the true nature of the popular synthetic food.

 

[BAYLOR]

I liked the film Soylent Green based off or it with Charlton Heston and Edward G Robinson. The film was Robinson last film . It looks like 1970's science fiction and very dated but it does entertain.

 

[galanx]

Mostly what I remember from this is the description of the Chinese refugee ships (from conquest of Taiwan?) that were basically justed docked side by side and left to form their own huge floating ghetto.

 

[BAYLOR]

Ive nor read book, but there was mention in the film of the Green House effect.